Electro-optic steering of random laser emission in liquid crystals

Abstract

Using an external low-frequency electric field applied to dye-doped nematic liquid crystals, we demonstrate that random lasing obtained by optical pumping can be steered in an angular direction by routing an all-optical waveguide able to collect the emitted light. By varying the applied voltage from 0 to 2 V, we reduce the walk-off and sweep the random laser guided beam over 7 degrees.